The IT services unit at the Gloucester Royal Hospital has recently been installed with Panda Softwareís WebAdmin Antivirus solution, which will help 1700 client computers throughout the county to receive and send vital information safely and efficiently.
Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust required a system that would enable all the GP practice computers, many of which use separate networks, to link to a central server within the Hospital, without the risk of spreading viruses or being beset with spyware.
Panda WebAdmin Antivirus has been selected by Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (GHNFT) to protect IT traffic between The Gloucester Royal Hospital and GP practices in its area. The Trust was keen to replace its existing security solution, which would not work accurately with the many different networks used by individual practices, and mobile users. The challenge of this project was to ensure that the Panda solution would not only work on email communications between the hospital and the practices, but also protect GPís as they accessed the Internet. In addition, the Trust wanted a scalable solution, to deal with the number of practices that would need to be added on to the system over a period of time.
The threat from all types of malware was already evident, and the Trust could see that the existing solution was not identifying and dealing with enough of the viruses and spyware that were attacking the network. Discussions were opened with Panda Software, and a decision was taken to replace the old anti-virus software with WebAdmin, which is designed to deliver complete ëhands-offí protection for an organisationís servers and workstations. To the Trustís relief WebAdmin can be instantly deployed and automatically updated, and the Panda team were able to adapt the software to fit the Trustís specific requirements.
Two months from the initial install, 500 computers within GP practices throughout Gloucestershire have been updated to WebAdmin, and their protection is managed from one central point within the IT services department at Gloucester Royal Hospital. Tom Day, Senior Support Technician, said: ìWe are responsible for the safe running of all these computers, which are used heavily to check patient records, book hospital appointments, communicate with consultants, not to mention access the Internet. We have to protect them at every stage from the dangers of malware, and the Panda system will work with all the computers, no matter what individual network is being used. In two months, the Panda WebAdmin solution has identified 435 suspect items, mainly spyware, which is hundreds more than our previous antivirus system.î
Deployment of the security solution is ongoing and the Trust will ultimately incorporate a total of 1700 remote computers within the safety net offered by WebAdmin. The major benefit of the product is that as long as the client computer is connected to the Internet, it can be monitored and managed securely, enabling the individual practices to work without the risk of contracting a virus, or being plagued with spyware. The obvious result is that the system can be managed centrally by just one person, and it delivers a high level of protection, thereby preventing loss of productivity and enabling the Trust to achieve a rapid return on investment.
Tom Day said: ìPreviously we had to travel to each site to ensure that the computers were being maintained, which required more manpower and took up a lot of time. Now, because everything is managed from just one point by one person, we are able to make more efficient use of our technical resources. This ultimately leads to a better quality service to GP practicesî
Key Features
Complete protection against Internet threats
Remote installation, configuration and monitoring via the Internet
Centralised management from a single location including computers in branch offices and laptops
Powerful, configurable reports, exportable to files
Daily automatic updates against new threats
Minimum IT resources usage
Unattended administration
More information about Panda WebAdmin is available on www.pandasoftware.co.uk
